Kalliolaw- Attorneys at Law is a Finnish mid-size commercial law firm. It specializes in serving growing companies and corporations commencing as of the initial planning stages through IPO’s.

We serve start-up’s comprehensively relating to legal issues faced by start-up’s such as drafting various agreements, assisting with fund raising and intellectual property rights’ strategy, assisting with personnel related questions and building up a roadmap for overall legal matters to make the start-up to achieve its goals, whether it is fund raising, exit or getting into new market area.

KPMG is a global network of professional firms providing Audit, Tax and Advisory services. Worldwide, we have more than 152,000 outstanding professionals working together to deliver value in 156 countries and in Finland we are over 750 professionals in 16 locations.

For start-ups KPMG equals with accessing the knowledge and expertise that will help shape and deliver strategies of the future. We provide our support for example within financial reporting, tax advisory, business development and internationalization.

Should You Apply to the Founder Institute? by Stefan Broda

In this post from his blog, Founder Institute graduate, Stefan Broda, Founder of BeforeWeDo, shares his experience with the Silicon Valley Founder Institute. His honest and candid feedback is a must-read for any entrepreneur considering the program. Thinking of applying? Check out what Stefan had to say about mentor feedback, networking, time commitment, assignments, and more.

The Founder Institute is a 4 month startup acceleration / incubation program that uses top-down style classes (remember high school?), assignment and a pitch-driven approach to help you to formulate and drive startup ideas from first thought to incorporated business.

What was awesome about it:

Structured, well organized acceleration program that you apply to yourself and your own idea and later startup

Assessment to see whether you are the right fit for a startup entrepreneur lifestyle and to help you develop personally and qualify your idea

Great resources for each class (previous recorded talks, reading, templates)

Fellows during the program and graduates after the program form a strong peer-support community. This is especially important after graduation as you will continue to motivate each other to maintain a sense of urgency and professionalism for each other! Also helps that after graduation, we own small parts of each others' companies ;-)

A great partner network - graduates will have access to special deals with vendors such as Rackspace, First Republic Bank, etc.

Not very lean yet. 4 months are a long time for a lean startup to go through one serial curriculum of topics. I’d like an incubator to adopt lean practices, enforce iterative Build-Measure-Learn cycles with review milestones with standardized metrics at which point the founder either decides to stay on course or pivot.

Come with thick skin and expect some tough love. Feedback will be brutally honest which is great! However with one out of 25 Mentors or so... the feedback can even get a bit personal/mildly abusive. I’d like FI to keep up the brutal honesty but lets keep it professional at all times. At those times, just thank the judge and don’t talk back.

Assignments are a lot of work but at the end, you don’t receive feedback on it from FI. So make sure you do them for yourself and your startup.

It's just part time. So if you already quit your job, this might not be enough of a structure for you to accompany your startup every day. So don’t rely on FI to manage your daily life but see it as an accompanying program.

Early Conclusion (see more below):

Definitely apply if you are still in a job and would like help in figuring out if your idea or you are Startup ready

Apply when you are new to the West Coast and want to build your advisory / mentor network.

Apply when you want to further your personal development and further strengthen your entrepreneurial toolbox.

For me, number 2 and 3 applied and for me, the Founder Institute was an awesome experience!

The Founder Institute is the world's largest entrepreneur training and startup launch program, helping aspiring founders across the globe build enduring technology companies. Based in Silicon Valley and with chapters across 50 countries, the Founder Institute has helped launch over 1,563 companies in 5 years. The company's mission is to "Globalize Silicon Valley" and build sustainable startup ecosystems that will create one million new jobs worldwide.